I've recently moved house. I had dealings with a number of authorities from my previous address including submitting FoI requests. I now submit a request (by post) from my new address. They send the reply to my old postal address. By your logic they have complied but any reasonable person (I believe) would say they haven't.
I do see what you mean about WDTK being unpopular with the authorities. But then I think that would be the case however and where ever the replies are made. Knowledge is power and those in power often don't want to share their knowledge. An FoI request is much like an audit, and the auditors and those who help them are never popular. Stephen Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange -----Original Message----- From: Mark Goodge <[email protected]> Sender: developers-public-bounces+stephenbooth.uk=gmail....@lists.mysociety.org Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:10:06 To: mySociety public, general purpose discussion list<[email protected]> Reply-To: "mySociety public, general purpose discussion list" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [mySociety:public] Getting a bit t'd off with what do they know... On 16/03/2012 10:24, Stephen Booth wrote: > On 16 March 2012 07:58, Seb Bacon<[email protected]> wrote: >> FYI, every outgoing email already says "Please use this email address >> for all replies to this request: [email protected]" at the >> bottom. Other ideas for user education welcome :) >> > > Could the ICO be encouraged to view a reply sent to an email address > other than that in the From: or Reply-To: headers of or specified in > the body of the original emailed request as not being a reply, even if > the authority believe or claim to believe it went to the same person? I don't think that would fly, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, as Colm has already pointed out, there is legal precedent for the fact that delivery is considered to have taken place when it reaches *any* address known to be used by the recipient, irrespective of whether it's their preferred address[1]. If that works one way, it will work the other as well. Secondly, it's just bad PR to try to insist that every FoI authority in the land adapts itself to WDTK's way of doing things. The FOIA, and WDTK, is unpopular enough in some quarters anyway without giving bureaucrats another stick to beat it with. While the majority of misdirected responses are almost certainly a result of human error, there will be occasions where they are not[2]. So the system has to be able to cope with them being different sometimes. [1] There are very good reasons for this. It means that an organisation can't insist that you jump through hoops of their choosing when sending legal documents via email in order to discourage them from being sent in the first place (or to disclaim responsibility for acting on them when they arrive). Among other things, it makes it impossible for organisations to refuse to answer FoI requests on the basis that they were sent via email rather than submitted through a web form, for example. [2] One such situation is where a person submits two (or more) separate requests to the same authority. Provided that they can still manage to respond to both requests within an acceptable timeframe, it's entirely legitimate to send both responses in one email. Mark -- Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine 2 http://mark.goodge.co.uk _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/stephenbooth.uk%40gmail.com _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
